As I got ready to leave our place, I looked outside: a little chilly, but it looked like it would clear up. Excellent, I thought, it's time to welcome Spring by heading out without a jacket. Well, it was quite windy at Tessa's, and as we were driving to the auction the wind continued to pick up and it started to rain. Then it hailed for a few minutes. Then we found some blue sky, and the sun came out. We cycled through wind, rain, hail, snow, and sun throughout the entire auction. But we hid in the outbuildings, and when the sun came out we rejoiced and ventured out of the pole shed.
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| Auctioning off items on a trailer, in the rain |
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| Our new welder :) |
There were some other great items: three tractors, a D6 Cat bulldozer with a blade (which went for $5100; the piling blade for it went for $1000), and a selection of scales.
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| This is a beautiful platform scale - I didn't catch how much it went for. Unfortunately, I wasn't lucky bider 137. |
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| The big machinery was all out in a row in the field |
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| A potato planter on the left ($950), and a potato harvester on the right ($2500). |
We all came home muddy, happy, and excited for the next auction in June. It looks like both of the guys will be able to join us, and we'll both bring the trucks.
In other news...
We are working on the farmers forum - keep an eye out for an update on that soon.
Our snow is melting quite quickly, and it looks like we'll avoid any flooding. There's some water pooling in the low spots, but I'd guess that it's no more than 3 or 4 inches deep, and it likely won't stick around for very long. There's a chance that we'll be ripping up sod in the next few weeks!
Our seedlings are starting to sprout! We started a few things last weekend: corn, tomatoes, onions and pumpkins. There's little green things sticking up in almost each tray section - just a few of the tomatoes are lagging behind, but I'm sure they'll be up soon too.
Project season will be starting soon! We'll kick it off by excluding the bats and taking a look at what's under the tin on the roof, likely next weekend. I'll probably build some bat houses next weekend too - I'd like to keep the bats around, just not in our roof!
Oh Mandi your first auction and a great buy on that welder good for you. I love auctions as you know it is a great way to get started in farming and keep the costs down. It is good for farmers to support the auctions of other farmers or their families. This keeps the farming business going round and round. I am going to love seeing your auction posts. We went to one every weekend so far but it is getting busy here so not sure how many more we will be going to, but we try to go every weekend.
ReplyDeleteGood luck under the tin we have bats too I need to build some houses. Hugs B
Thanks Buttons! While we were there, I thought of your auction posts, particularly the ones about how sad it must be for the farmer and their family to watch everything they have worked so hard for get sold off to the highest bidder. The farmer came out and mingled in the crowd, answering questions and starting the big equipment when it was their turn on the block. All that hard, hard work, and now the farm is officially done - there's no coming back from a total sell-off auction. I'm sure there were many hard conversations in the months and years leading up to the auction, likely along the lines of "Well, we're getting old, and the kids aren't interested...." or "We made less (or lost more) this year than the last three years..." But I could be wrong, maybe they were more like "You know, it would be nice to travel again..." or "I'm getting tired of working from sun up to sun down and beyond, we have a little nest egg, I'm sure we can make it work..."
DeleteOh well, that is life. They would have gotten a bit of money from the auction and more freedom in their life.
There are a few more coming up that we're excited about!
Hugs, Mandi
I am really glad you invited me, that was a lot of fun! It should be even better next time when we can bring the guys!
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